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special edition

Every Christmas I make Jack a special edition of one of his poems or stories. This year I picked his poem "Antigone." If you're not familiar with Greek mythology, Antigone was the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. The poor woman attempted to secure a respectable burial for her brother and the King punished her by entombing her alive. Very harsh!

Jack's poem references the story obliquely by talking about a visit to a former colonial prison in Tasmania and his experience in one of the tiny cells. I've pasted the poem below. You read the left column first and then the right.

For this design project I decided to go for a very simple altered book, inspired by the example below from Workshop Press where Richard Killeen's Sampler catalogue, with an essay by Francis Pound, was reworked into Interiors, with an essay by Anna Miles. The original text was effaced with a marker pen and large stickers printed with the text of Miles' essay.

Here's the catalogue I'm working with:

You'll see that I'm deliberately not mentioning
the artist's name in case she happens to be googling herself one day and
comes across this post. It's just possible she mightn't appreciate
having her catalogue cut up! The catalogue is filled with eerie circular photographs of the now
empty rooms of an abandoned residential treatment facility for alcohol
and drug dependency on Rotorua Island. It seemed a perfect fit for Jack's poem!

Firstly I cut out each page, selecting the nine pages that had an image on the front and the back.

I broke the poem into nine sections and typed each one on my trusty vintage typewriter, trying to arrange the text on windows and walls of the rooms.

I cut out the circles leaving tabs on each side

then I taped together the tabs in sequence to form a frieze

the poem can be hung on the wall by pinning the tabs at each end

I used the catalogue cover to make an envelope for the Antigone frieze

and I added another room on the front with the title and Jack's name

And there you have it - Jack's 2015 Christmas edition.
I'm pretty sure he's going to love this.